Diaphoneme

Concept in dialectology analyzing phonemes across dialects of a language

A diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late with that of wait or eight Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait with that of eight This non overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late , a second diaphoneme for words like wait , and a third diaphoneme for words like eight Words Phonemes Diaphonemes Variety A Variety B late wait eight

Diaphonology studies the realization of diaphones across dialects, and is important if an orthography is to be adequate for more than one dialect of a language. In historical linguistics, it is concerned with the reflexes of an ancestral phoneme as a language splits into dialects, such as the modern realizations of Old English
The concept goes back to the 1930s. The word diaphone was originally used with the same meaning as diaphoneme, but was later repurposed to refer to any of the particular variants, making the relationship between diaphoneme and diaphone analogous to that between phoneme and allophone.

Einar Haugen expanded the diaphonic approach to the study of bilingualism, believing diaphones represented the process of interlingual identification wherein sounds from different languages are perceptually linked into a single category. Because interlingual identifications may happen between unrelated varieties, it is possible to construct a diasystem for many different language contact situations, with the appropriateness of such a construction depending on its purpose and its simplicity depending on how isomorphic the phonology of the systems are. For example, the Spanish of Los Ojos (a small village in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico) and the local variety of Southwestern English are fairly isomorphic with each other so a diaphonic approach for such a language contact situation would be relatively straightforward. makes use of a diaphonic approach in discussing the phonology of the pidgin English used by Japanese immigrants on Hawaiian plantations. Both Haugen and Weinreich considered the use of phonemes beyond a single language to be inappropriate when phonemic systems between languages were incommensurable with each other. Similarly, , argues that phonemic representations may lead to confusion when dealing with phonological interference and remarks that narrow phonetic transcription can be cumbersome, especially when discussing other grammatical features like syntax and morphology. Allophones, which phonemic systems don't account for, may be important in the process of interference and interlingual identifications.

Similarly, the term diaphone can be used in discussions of cognates that occur in different languages due to borrowing. Specifically, used the term to refer to phonemes that are equated by speakers cross linguistically because of similarities in shape and/or distribution. For example, loanwords in Huave having "diaphonic identification" with Spanish include àsét ('oil', from Spanish aceite) and kàwíy ('horse', from Spanish caballo). This perception of sameness with native phonology means that speakers of the borrower language (in this case, Huave) will hear new features from the loaner language (in this case, Spanish) as equivalent to features of their own and substitute in their own when reproducing them. In these interlanguage transfers, when phonemes or phonotactic constraints are too different, more extreme compromises may occur; for example, the English phrase Merry Christmas, when borrowed into Hawaiian, becomes mele kalikimaka.

The process of diaphonic identification occurs when pidgins are fashioned; although lexical and morphosyntactic patterns are shared, speakers often use the phonological systems of their native language, meaning they must learn to recognize such diaphonic correspondences in the speech of others to facilitate the mutual intelligibility of a working pidgin. proposes that rule differences can be used to determine the distance a particular utterance has between a post creole continuum's acrolectal and basolectal forms. points out that mesolectal varieties often have features not derivable from such rules.